Major Phil Packer MBE, who was injured in a rocket attack in Iraq in 2008, has crossed the finishing line of his 2,012 mile charity walk in Canary Wharf, London.Major Phil Packer MBE, a former soldier who was told he would never walk again after a rocket attack in Iraq in 2008, has completed his 2,012 mile walk to raise money to build a Centre for Inspiration to help youngsters facing adversity. It is the latest of a series of challenges that the former soldier has undertaken since 2008, including parachuting with the Red Devils and rowing the English Channel.

For the second day in a row, the Obama adminstration criticized Israel on Tuesday for its decision to build new housing units in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, often wrongly described by anti-Israeli media as an "illegal settlement in east Jerusalem". “We are deeply disappointed that Israel insists on continuing this pattern of provocative action,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters. “These repeated announcements and plans of new construction run counter to the cause of peace. "Israel’s leaders continually say that they support a path towards a two-state solution, yet these actions only put that goal further...

New York Times ^ | December 17, 2012 | DAVID BARSTOW and ALEJANDRA XANIC von BERTRAB

Wal-Mart de Mexico was an aggressive and creative corrupter, offering large payoffs to get what the law otherwise prohibited, an examination by The New York Times found. AN JUAN TEOTIHUACÁN, Mexico — Wal-Mart longed to build in Elda Pineda’s alfalfa field. It was an ideal location, just off this town’s bustling main entrance and barely a mile from its ancient pyramids, which draw tourists from around the world. With its usual precision, Wal-Mart calculated it would attract 250 customers an hour if only it could put a store in Mrs. Pineda’s field. One major obstacle stood in Wal-Mart’s way. After...

PORT ST. LUCIE — Liberty Medical Supplies announced Tuesday plans in two months to lay off 250 employees from its Port St. Lucie location after the company's new owners opted to exit the Medicare fee-for-service business in early 2013. Employees will be given severance packages depending on their positions, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Frank Harvey said. Some of the company's outgoing business will turn over to Coral Springs-based Arriva Medical. Harvey said Arriva Medical probably will hire several hundred employees from Liberty Medical for at least six months. Liberty Medical also announced the company will layoff 200 employees at...

Amidst the political fallout surrounding the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, one chain of sporting goods stores is suspending sale of certain types of rifles. Dick’s Sporting Goods, which has branches all over the United States, told the media that it has removed all weapons from the shelves of stores near Newtown, and that it would be removing certain specified weapons from shelves across the country. “We continue to extend our deepest sympathies to those affected by this terrible tragedy,” the chain told the press. The chain has removed all weapons categorized as “modern sporting rifles.”...

Convicted child rapist Brent Egan Dotson is currently on the run and authorities need help bringing him to justice. If you see this man, do not hesitate to call local authorities wherever you may be. He has been convicted, in absentia, of raping a child for two years, starting when she was 7 years old. The South Carolina man hasn't been sentenced yet, and won't be until he is apprehended. His crimes carry a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison and he must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Facebook's Seeking the Lost community...

NEWTOWN, Conn. – The gunman who slaughtered 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school may have snapped because his mother was planning to commit him to a psychiatric facility, according to a lifelong resident of the area who was familiar with the killer’s family and several of the victims’ families. Adam Lanza, 20, targeted Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown after killing his mother early Friday because he believed she loved the school “more than she loved him,” said Joshua Flashman, 25, who grew up not far from where the shooting took place. Flashman, a U.S. Marine,...

QUICK! When was the greatest school massacre in American history? HINT: You weren't alive when it happened and there's a very good chance that your parents weren't either. Google: Bath School Massacre Be alert....the Socialist facists are coming for our guns. One trained school employee, armed with a .22, could have stopped the Sandy Hook shooter. An armed pilot on each of 4 airplanes would have stopped 9/11 cold. This isn't about the slaughter of innocents. This is about the ever expanding reach of government into our everyday lives. God bless the NRA and G*d damn Liberalism!!!!

Abortion and Newtown: The Culture of Violence Jeffrey Lord “The horrifying truth is this: we live now in a culture that not only does not respect life, but discards it like trash — not only at the beginning of life, but also at the end, and every place in between. “What has happened to us?” — Catholic Deacon Greg Kandra October 2, 2011 Discards life like trash. One does not have to be a Catholic, which I am not, to appreciate the irony today in the words above from over a year ago by a Catholic Deacon named Greg Kandra....

One of the most fascinating characteristics of government borrowing - whether at the local, state, or federal level - is that debts contracted over time are obligations tied to specific geographical boundaries but not to the citizens living there when those debts were incurred. For example, while it's customary to say that each of the 210,000 residents of Stockton, California, are on the hook for their share of the bankrupt municipality's estimated $700 million in unpaid bills, the day one of them picks up and moves, personal responsibility for that debt drops to zero.

One week before a new minimum wage law for Long Beach hotels goes into effect, two hotels have told employees to expect layoffs of as many as 75 people, according to union representatives. At a confrontation with union activists Friday, a manager at one of the hotels, the Best Western Golden, denied that a local ballot measure triggered the cuts. He said bad economic conditions were to blame. In November, Long Beach voters approved a measure requiring hotels with 100 or more rooms to pay their employees $13 an hour. In a letter to employees posted at the hotel Monday,...

Just watched O'Reilly interview the parents of Jon Hammar, the Marine, detained in Mexico for a bogus gun charge. O'Reilly says he's going to give Obama and the State Department 3 days to get this done. Otherwise he says there will be "hell to pay"

Gun control is a subject which lies dormant in the hearts, minds, and souls of the American public. Its menacing social connotation rises and set as often as the sun itself. With respect to the recent shootings of innocent children and adults at the Sandy Hill Elementary School in Connecticut, and previous gun related violence, gun control once again is a national hot topic which offers various opinions among groups who support the letter of the law regarding the Second Amendment and those who oppose the Amendment altogether. read more at: http://jxb7076.hubpages.com/hub/Gun-Ownership-In-America-Right-Privilege-or-Curse

Gun control is a subject which lies dormant in the hearts, minds, and souls of the American public. Its menacing social connotation rises and set as often as the sun itself. With respect to the recent shootings of innocent children and adults at the Sandy Hill Elementary School in Connecticut, and previous gun related violence, gun control once again is a national hot topic which offers various opinions among groups who support the letter of the law regarding the Second Amendment and those who oppose the Amendment altogether. read more at: http://jxb7076.hubpages.com/hub/Gun-Ownership-In-America-Right-Privilege-or-Curse

DENVER (CBS4) – A woman accused of bringing a gun to a Denver middle school and menacing several students has been formally charged. Lynn Kimbrough with the district attorney’s office said Monica Avila, 34, was charged with four counts of menacing and one count of possession of a weapon on school grounds.

AUBURN HILLS — When Michigan-based Android Industries needed a place to expand this year, it chose Ft. Wayne, Ind. "Indiana became a right-to-work state and (it) offers us a competitive location," Android Vice President of Human Resources David Donnay told the Indiana Economic Development Corp. Android added 4,000 square feet to a building and invested $7.3 million at the facility with a target of adding 70 employees. So did the pending right-to-work law come too late for the company to consider Michigan? "There are many factors that go into a decision on where to expand," Donnay said. He said Android...

America's thriving gun industry, which has been riding high on a surge in sales, is under increasing pressure in the wake of Friday's elementary school massacre. Responding to a national wave of revulsion over the 27 murders in Newtown, Conn., retail chain Dick's Sporting Goods Inc. on Tuesday suspended sales of semiautomatic rifles at its 480 stores, while Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT +0.43% deleted from its website a listing for one such rifle. Private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP said Tuesday it would try to sell Freedom Group Inc., the manufacturer of the Bushmaster rifle that police say Adam Lanza...

In the NFC, five 8-6 teams appear to be competing for two available spots, though the 9-5 Seahawks haven't secured their postseason berth yet. And while the Steelers, Cowboys and Giants wouldn't make the playoffs if the season ended today, all would get in by winning their remaining two games. The Vikings, who would make it right now, do not control their own fate.

Murders of school-age children---those between the ages of 5 and 18—declined by 42 percent between the 1992-93 school year and the 2008-2009 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, and only about 1 percent of the school age children murdered during the 2008-2009 school year were murdered at school. In February 2012, the Bureau of Justice Statistics published a report—“Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2011”—that included statistics on homicides committed at schools for the school years from 1992-93 through 2009-2010. The report also included the total number of all school-age children who were murdered at school or...

The patient didn’t overdose on medication. She overdosed on grapefruit juice. The 42-year-old was barely responding when her husband brought her to the emergency room. Her heart rate was slowing, and her blood pressure was falling. Doctors had to insert a breathing tube, and then a pacemaker, to revive her. They were mystified: The patient’s husband said she suffered from migraines and was taking a blood pressure drug called verapamil to help prevent the headaches. But blood tests showed she had an alarming amount of the drug in her system, five times the safe level. Did she overdose? Was she...

December 19, 2012 Wednesday of the Third Week of Advent Reading 1 Jgs 13:2-7, 24-25a There was a certain man from Zorah, of the clan of the Danites,whose name was Manoah.His wife was barren and had borne no children.An angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her,"Though you are barren and have had no children,yet you will conceive and bear a son.Now, then, be careful to take no wine or strong drinkand to eat nothing unclean.As for the son you will conceive and bear,no razor shall touch his head,for this boy is to be...

An independent panel charged with investigating the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans has concluded that systematic management and leadership failures at the State Department led to "grossly" inadequate security at the mission in Benghazi. "Systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place," the panel said.

“Hi, I’m Edwin, and I own firearms!”Right now, in the shadow of the horrors of the Sandy Hook shooting, it feels as if every gun-owner is on edge. Some are apologizing, distancing themselves from gun advocacy groups. Some are saying all the right words, “well, my target gun is locked in a safe.” Like telling your Baptist Preacher grandpa, “my whisky is in a cabinet and is only for medicinal purposes, of course.” Some are saying, “well, I like guns, but nobody needs automatic guns that can be sprayed across a room.”The thing is, we didn’t want to talk about...

Not all black mob riots start with an armed robbery and car chase. But this one did. Just like on TV. This riot is also on TV: YouTube. Not quite as polished but you get the picture. The attacks are part of an epidemic of hundreds of cases of black mob violence in more than 80 cities over the last three years, as documented in the book “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The return of racial violence to America and how the media ignore it.” Chicago is Ground Zero for violence and denial. So much so that the riot did...

The movie "Zero Dark Thirty" suggests the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques led the U.S. to Osama bin Laden. Sen. John McCain watched the movie Monday night and says it left him sick — because it's wrong.

I went to a gun shop this evening in the "South". This is a well-known gun shop but it's in the middle of freakin nowhere. Drove an hour to get there. I went there tonight because, yesterday morning, I bought a "piece" over the phone so they had it locked up in the back for me. So I had to pick it up tonight. But the real story was I couldn't believe how many people were in there. There were at least 150 people in there. All the parking spaces in the lot were full. Black guns were flying off...

The Newtown school shooting. It’s a tragedy that a mass shooting requires a qualifier, but this is America so we need to be specific as not to be confused with Aurora, Columbine, Arizona, or Virginia Tech. Colorado massacres require a site specific qualifier.There are 2 common elements with all these massacres: mental illness and guns (not hunting rifles, but firearms designed to cause maximin human carnage in the shortest amount of time).And both deserve our attention.Mental illness, because people who commit mass murder have some mental health condition found in a psychiatric textbook. They are either schizophrenic, psychotic, or sociopaths....

Ten Saints Every Worrier Should Know Nov 12th, 2012by Gary Zimak Although we’d rather not admit it, many of us worry (or are tempted to worry) each day of our lives. One of the reasons that we worry is that we sometimes feel we are facing our problems alone. Once we meet others who are dealing with similar problems, we usually feel better. Even more comforting is when we encounter someone who has survived the issue that is troubling us. As Catholics, much can be gained by studying the lives of the saints. Far from living easy lives, these...

FAIRBANKS — A wolf attacked a Tok trapper on his snowmachine last week about 30 miles off the Taylor Highway, biting through the man’s parka and three layers of clothing to put a 3-inch gash on his arm. Lance Grangaard, 30, said he was “putting along” on his Ski-Doo Tundra on Thursday afternoon, coming down a frozen creek, when he saw the wolf out of the corner of his eye. “I turned in time to stick my arm up,” said Grangaard, who was trapping with his father, Danny, in a remote area off the Taylor Highway known as Ketchumstuk. “A...

I just posted about Princeton’s notorious bioethics professor, Peter Singer, embracing Aubrey de Gray’s anti-aging crusade. As I read his piece, I was struck by Singer’s raging inconsistency about the moral unimportance of people not yet conceived. But it didn’t fit in that post, so I write about it here. Singer essentially claims that those not yet born have no cause for complaint if the interests of those alive now are put first. From, “Should We Live to 1000?”: If our planet has a finite capacity to support human life, is it better to have fewer people living longer lives,...

Istanbul, December 18 (World Watch Monitor) — Three years after a Syrian Orthodox foundation applied to build a church in Istanbul, the Greater Istanbul Municipality has granted them a large plot of land and a building permit. Banner headlines in the Turkish media praised the early-December decision as “a first in the history of the Republic,” declaring that never before had Turkey allowed a non-Muslim minority to build an official new house of worship. Still, Syriac Christians were far from pleased. For one thing, the land they were “granted” by the municipality is, in fact, a Latin Catholic cemetery. “We...

DEVELOPING: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accepted 29 suggestions to improve embassy security issued as part of a review board's report that faults Clinton's department for security failures and confirms no protest preceded the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The release of the report, posted Tuesday night on the State Department's website, comes after more than three months of intense debate in Washington over who was behind the attack, what motivated the attacks and why U.S. authorities weren't able to stop the violence,... ~snip~ Although the motive for the attack remains unclear, the report confirms...

Jerusalem, Israel, Dec 18, 2012 / 12:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Armed conflicts and a decline in tourists and pilgrims from overseas will cause difficulties for Palestinian Christians, but they will still celebrate Christmas. “There are good and bad feelings this Christmas but if we consider that Christmas is above all a spiritual feast, I believe it will be a very good celebration,” Auxiliary Bishop William Shomali of Jerusalem told Aid to the Church in Need Dec. 17. “There will certainly be fewer pilgrims and other visitors from overseas. Many have canceled their trips here but we will still have many...

BRIDGEWATER — A Raritan man who lost his job as a Bridgewater Commons mall security guard after asking a Muslim woman to remove her traditional head scarf has filed suit alleging discrimination and wrongful termination. Marc Krause, of Raritan Borough, filed a legal complaint in Somerville against IPC International Corporation, a security vendor, and General Growth Properties, owner of Bridgewater Commons. The complaint was filed on Dec. 10 by attorney Brian Cige in New Jersey Superior Court in Somerville. Krause had worked at the mall since April 2001 while it was still owned by Rouse Company, and remained employed in...

Employers should expect the next round of regulations for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act to be a doozy, says Janet Trautwein, executive vice president and CEO of the National Association of Health Underwriters. This round of regs, now expected in early January, deal with the employer mandate. Employers not only will have to say whether they offer health care coverage or not, but they’ll also have to report specifically which employees they’re offering coverage for, Trautwein said. In addition, employers are going to have to track the coverage, probably monthly, she said. Trautwein, whose organization is based in...

Explanation: Have you ever seen a sun pillar? When the air is cold and the Sun is rising or setting, falling ice crystals can reflect sunlight and create an unusual column of light. Ice sometimes forms flat, six-sided shaped crystals as it falls from high-level clouds. Air resistance causes these crystals to lie nearly flat much of the time as they flutter to the ground. Sunlight reflects off crystals that are properly aligned, creating the sun-pillar effect. In the above picture taken last week, a sun-pillar reflects light from a Sun setting over Östersund, Sweden.

To understand the deep claims on our humanity that are central to bioethics, it can be helpful to turn to fiction. Two of the classic texts are Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, and Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. The first deals with the Promethean ambition of the scientist to reshape humanity. The second showcases the death of culture when sex is separated from reproduction. Another of my favourites, too often neglected, is The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells. Its power comes not from the whiz-bang gadgetry of time travel, but its pessimistic vision of evolution. Homo sapiens has evolved into...

Explanation: Why does this galaxy have so many big black holes? No one is sure. What is sure is that NGC 922 is a ring galaxy created by the collision of a large and small galaxy about 300 million years ago. Like a rock thrown into a pond, the ancient collision sent ripples of high density gas out from the impact point near the center that partly condensed into stars. Pictured above is NGC 922 with its beautifully complex ring along the left side, as imaged recently by the Hubble Space Telescope. Observations of NGC 922 with the Chandra X-ray...

Barack Obama brushed away what appeared to be tears during his speech in Newtown CT in the aftermath of the massacre. The Washington Post slobbered all over itself slobbering over Obama: President Obama, so often cool and unemotional, struggled to maintain his composure Friday as he addressed a nation reeling from a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school. “The majority of those who died today were children — beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old,” Obama said partway into a four-minute statement. Then he paused, tilting his head down and looking at his notes,...

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told CNN on Monday that the Connecticut shooting was a "tipping point" and added that if President Obama wanted to take action on gun laws by using an executive order, "God bless him."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accepted all 29 recommendations in a report into a deadly attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The report found that systemic failures at the state department led to insufficient security at the consulate. But it found no individual official ignored their duties, and the review has not suggested disciplinary action. The 11 September attack saw Ambassador Christopher Stevens, as well as three other Americans, killed.

Maryam Zohny erases message following advocacy group’s letter of complaint JTA — A photo and text calling an Israeli soldier a “terrorist” and “killer” were removed from the Facebook page of a Columbia University program director. Maryam Zohny, program director of the university’s Center for Palestine Studies, removed the post from her personal Facebook wall after the Anti-Defamation League sent a letter to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger expressing concern about the post. The post that Zohny shared on Dec. 13 read: “Israeli terrorist ‘Nofar Mizrahi’/Killer of the Martyr Muhamad Salayme/Wanted by the Resistance.” The post, which has been circulating...

WASHINGTON — An independent inquiry into the attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Libya that killed four Americans on Sept. 11 sharply criticizes the State Department for a lack of seasoned security personnel and relying on untested local militias to safeguard the compound, Congressional and State Department officials said Tuesday night. The investigation into the attacks on the diplomatic mission and C.I.A. annex that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others also faulted State Department officials in Washington for ignoring requests from officials at the American Embassy in Tripoli for more guards and safety upgrades to the...

Yep, the newest issue of “Candy,” “the first transversal style magazine,” features a transsexual model named Connie Fleming styled to look like First Lady Michelle Obama: In an interview with Dazed Digital, Publisher Luis Venegas explains the inspiration behind the Michelle Obama-inspired cover: I especially love the cover story, which for the first time isn’t a super-popular star, but a fabulous, beautiful black transwoman channeling a politician who looks pretty much like Michelle Obama.

A photo depicting what appears to be the Teamsters Union flag improperly flying above the American flag outside the union’s D.C. headquarters on Tuesday was sent to TheBlaze, and the story of how a Marine veteran who tried to bring it to the group’s attention was treated is sure to raise eyebrows. The photo was taken by the Marine at approximately 2:10 pm ET and sent to TheBlaze by his brother. Both have requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by the union. This is the picture:

I'm in New England this week, and this afternoon caught Ann Coulter on the Howie Carr show. She spoke of the amazing ignorance of liberals when it comes to firearms. Just a couple of hours later, Chris Matthews provided a perfect case in point. On this evening's Hardball, speaking with Illinois Dem Senator Dick Durbin, Matthews proposed that Congress "outlaw" semi-automatic weapons. Does he not realize that doing so would render illegal virtually every hunting rifle in production? View the video after the jump. In all seriousness, did Matthews not understand the implications of what he was saying, or was...

The Fight for Aleppo: In Syria’s largest city, a sustained and pitched battle between rebels and the Syrian army has left the city in ruins. ALEPPO, Syria — Inside the classrooms where they once studied, the boys darted like a pack. Their banging and clanking could be heard for a city block. The playground outside had been hit by a Syrian Air Force airstrike, which fractured the school’s walls. Now the children were smashing the furniture, prying off wooden desktops and bench seats, rushing away with what they could. The Isam al-Nadri School for Boys was being dismantled for the...

WASHINGTON — An independent inquiry into the attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Libya that killed four Americans on Sept. 11 sharply criticizes the State Department for a lack of seasoned security personnel and relying on untested local militias to safeguard the compound, Congressional and State Department officials said Tuesday night. The investigation into the attacks on the diplomatic mission and C.I.A. annex that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others also faulted State Department officials in Washington for ignoring requests from officials at the American Embassy in Tripoli for more guards and safety upgrades to the...

TOKYO THE first grade class at the elementary school in Nanmoku, about 85 miles from Tokyo, has just a single student this year. The local school system that five decades ago taught 1,250 elementary school children is now educating just 37. Many of the town’s elegant wooden homes are abandoned. Where generations of cedar loggers, sweet potato farmers and factory workers once made their lives, monkeys now reside. The only sounds at night are the cries of deer and the wail of an occasional ambulance. Nanmoku’s plight is Japan’s fate. Faced with an aging society, a depopulating countryside and economic...